Autonomous Pan-Amazonian and Mesoamerican Archaeological Survey: Identifying Regional-Scale Urban Sprawls and Hydraulic Networks Through Open-Access LiDAR and AI Pipeline
For over a century, archaeological orthodoxy maintained that tropical rainforest environments across the Amazon Basin and Central American lowlands were incapable of sustaining complex, high-density urban civilizations due to soil nutrient limitations and dense rainforest canopies. Leveraging open-access airborne LiDAR repositories alongside our newly developed **Archae-Hunter AI** spatial co-occurrence framework, we present an exhaustive, multi-regional survey spanning four major unexcavated biomes:1. Campeche/Tabasco Lowlands (Mexico - Maya Pyramids & Sacbe Highways)2. Llanos de Mojos (Beni, Bolivia - Casarabe Monumental Mounds & Canals)3. Acre Geoglyph Corridor (Brazil/Peru Frontier - Geometric Ditches)4. Upper Caquetá River Terraces (Colombia - Fluvial Bluff Settlements) Across these four biomes, our automated pipeline systematically identified **30 high-confidence monumental urban complexes**, interconnected causeway arteries, and seasonal canal embankments. The algorithm was benchmarked against the UNESCO World Heritage site of Calakmul, achieving a 98.4% precision rate. This repository contains the full preprint manuscript, complete GeoJSON spatial vector layers (30 sites with coordinates and confidence metrics), multi-directional hillshade rasters, and cross-sectional elevation profiles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license for open field verification.
Authors
- Tetsuo Ohizumi
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-10-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23680395
- Primary Topic
- Archaeological Research and Protection
- Type
- preprint